Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  “Don’t blame yourself. You did what you thought was right, just like you always do. And even over the screen, I could see your face tighten when I mentioned PrimeCorp. Let it go for now. We’re not going to solve the PrimeCorp problem tonight.” Regina smiled and leaned back from her screen, curling a long strand of dark hair around her finger. Bands of white threaded through it, striping it like a candy cane. “You look good, Lanar. As always.”

  “So do you, Regina.”

  “Not the same, and you know it,” she said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m sworn to secrecy about your nano-whatever-they-are. I just sometimes wonder what might have happened if we’d stayed together. Where would we be now?”

  I grinned. “You’d have worn me out long ago. I’d be divorced or dead from fatigue.”

  She quirked a half-smile. “Or I’d be the envy of every woman in Nearspace, and they’d be whispering about what I’d done to land such a handsome younger husband. Ah well.” She straightened in her chair. “It’s good to see you, Lanar, even under the circumstances. You’ll keep me informed about your sister?”

  I inclined my head. “Right away.”

  Regina leaned close to the screen and blew me a kiss. “Try to stay out of trouble, dear.” She cut the connection before I had a chance to agree or protest.

  The coldpack beeped, signalling it had been in place long enough, and I pulled the adhesive free and tossed the whole thing in the recycler. I’d been tired before, but now agitation spurred me around my quarters, pacing evenly from the kitchenette to the view wall and back again. I traversed the small space three more times, trying to relax into the movement of my body, before stopping in front of the view wall. Beyond it, ships moved with slow grace, approaching or leaving the station, and further out a sprinkling of stars flickered in the deep black of space. I let my forehead lean into the cool, smooth solidity of the wall. The transparent barrier seemed little enough to separate me from the vacuum beyond.

  I just sometimes wonder what might have happened if we’d stayed together.

  Regina’s words, but they conjured another name—Soranna. Her face flashed in my memory, wide dark eyes and sunflower hair, mouth parted in the beginning of a laugh. We’d been married only ten years, not long enough for the issues of her aging and my non-aging to affect us. When she’d died, the problem, if it would ever have existed, had died with her. That was the image I still kept on a shelf in my living quarters, and had done so for forty-five years now. It horrified me to think that if I lived long enough, I might forget what she looked like.

  Maybe that was the reason I’d never remarried. Although Luta and Hirin had managed all right. Not perfectly, and it had caused problems, but—they were still together.

  I pushed back from the view wall with a sigh, turned down the lights, and picked up my datapad. I needed names for Luta in the morning, if she agreed to my plan. I had no time to spend on the past tonight. The future was enough to worry about.

  “YOU’RE SERIOUS?”

  Luta’s glare was almost strong enough for me to feel it through the comm screen. My sister was a sweetheart, but when she wasn’t happy with you, you knew it. Those eyes could cut through you when she was angry as easily as they poured compassion on you when you hurt. Her auburn hair was caught back in a clip, and since it was still early, I suspected she hadn’t been awake long.

  “Let me explain,” I said meekly. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.”

  Her eyes softened for a moment, but then she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, head cocked at a belligerent angle. “All right, so talk. But remember, the last time I did you and the Protectorate a favour, it didn’t turn out so well for me.”

  I couldn’t argue with her there. A few short weeks ago I’d asked her, on behalf of the Protectorate, to deliver a Lobor historian to a newly-discovered system. As a result, she and her crew had been stranded, kidnapped, shot at, chased, made first contact with an alien race, and Luta herself had almost died when her nanobioscavengers had malfunctioned. I wouldn’t have been too pleased with me, either.

  “This will be different,” I assured her, holding up a placatory hand. Too late, I realized it was the one with the bruised knuckles and dropped it back down, but her eyes narrowed and I knew she’d seen. Before she could comment, I hurried on. “The Corvids invited you back to their system. All I’m asking you to do is take them up on their invitation. Stay for a few days, and come home.”

  “Why?”

  The holo of a forest on the wall behind her told me that Luta was in her quarters, not on the bridge. For a moment, my brother-in-law Hirin’s head appeared in my line of vision, leaning over Luta’s shoulder. My mother’s infusion of nanobioscavengers had taken his apparent age from ninety to something more like sixty, and he was enjoying his rejuvenation. His close-cropped hair had darkened from pure white to peppery grey, and his blue eyes were bright. He was also now free of the virus PrimeCorp had inflicted on him years ago. He smiled and waved a silent hello, then pointed at Luta and pulled a face. She must have noticed me trying not to laugh because she shooed him away.

  “That datapacket you brought us from the Corvids—well, some of it was corrupted. We couldn’t retrieve everything.”

  Luta’s lips thinned out to a pale white line. “Jahelia Sord took the original and left us a copy. Could it have been deliberate tampering?”

  I shrugged. “We’d have to find her and ask. I don’t know why she’d leave a partially corrupted copy, though. Why leave it at all if she didn’t want us to have the information?”

  “Jahelia Sord has interesting ideas about what’s amusing,” Luta said wryly. “But I guess the original could have had problems. Although Cerevare didn’t mention that, and we can’t ask her about it, since she’s still with the Chron—the good Chron.” She grimaced. I knew she hadn’t liked leaving the Lobor historian behind with the aliens, but it had been Cerevare Brindlepaw’s decision. “We need a way to differentiate between the ones that want to kill us and the ones that want to help us.”

  “I’ll get right to work on that,” I told her, “but in the meantime, here’s all we want you to do. Take a few Protectorate people on the Tane Ikai and escort a diplomatic envoy to the Corvid station. You don’t have to do anything official; the Council envoys will handle everything. Just keep them safe, and keep an eye on things while you’re there. Let the diplomats do their thing and gather whatever information the Corvids will share, and then escort them back. That’s it. A week, at most. No forays into Chron space. No uncharted systems. A quick visit and back home.”

  She leaned forward, green eyes narrowing. “Wait a second. The damaged wormhole into the connecting system isn’t expected to right itself for five years or so. How are we getting to the Corvids at all?”

  I smiled. If Luta didn’t know the answer to this, it meant the secret was still safe. “Remember what the Corvids told you about a ‘replacement’ wormhole spontaneously generating when one was damaged?”

  She nodded, pursing her lips. “So it happened just the way Fha said it would, and the Protectorate knows where it is?”

  “You got it, and we got lucky. It’s only about fifty thousand klicks from the damaged one, and under constant Protectorate surveillance.”

  “And the Protectorate can’t do this—why?”

  I rubbed a hand along the back of my neck, feeling the knot of tension there. “The Council wants this to look like an extremely peaceable visit. No Protectorate military ships involved. But we think it’s unwise to send them off on their own. And you—”

  Luta closed her eyes and finished for me. “—have a standing invitation to return any time I want, which the Council wouldn’t stop me from exercising for fear of insulting the Corvids.”

  “Lucky for you, that part of the datapacket wasn’t corrupted at all.”

  Her eyes flew open, and she cocked her head to one side, regarding me. “And you have no problem sending your little sister back into har
m’s way?”

  “Hey, it’s big sister, as you’re so fond of reminding me,” I said. I rolled my shoulders. “I do have a problem with it, Luta. It worries the hell out of me. But honestly, I think the risk is minimal, and the Tane Ikai is well-outfitted. And you’ll have Yuskeya and other officers in case anything happens. The thing is, we need this visit to happen. We don’t know enough about an enemy that could show up any day and start hammering away at us the way they did a century and a half ago. We’re stretched too thin across too much space.”

  “And there’s the little matter of PrimeCorp’s involvement with the Chron,” Luta added. “Is the Council going to address that? Or the Protectorate? Anyone? Or does PrimeCorp just continue on its merry way, doing whatever the hell it wants as usual?”

  I blew out a long sigh. “Would you believe, we didn’t even get to that part in the meeting? The investigation is supposedly started. Higher-ups in the Protectorate know about the evidence you brought back, but they’re trying to keep a lid on it for now.” I hadn’t told her, yet, that there were some of those high-level officers who simply didn’t believe the claims that she and her crew had encountered PrimeCorp ships in the uncharted Chron systems. They knew something about our family’s long-time conflict with PrimeCorp, and had decided that she’d been mistaken—or was willingly misinterpreting something. I’m not sure how they could explain away the evidence of the PrimeCorp files Jahelia Sord had obtained, but I was going to make it my job to find out. Luta would have to know about the skepticism eventually, but she was quite annoyed enough at me for one conversation. My implicit belief in her wouldn’t be enough to soothe her indignation.

  “You’re keeping it very quiet. I haven’t heard even a whisper about it in the open yet.” She leaned forward and picked up a steaming mug that Hirin must have just set down on the desk for her. He moved behind her again and winked at me. A double caff would surely improve her mood. “We need the information on the Chron from the Corvids, but we also need the information on PrimeCorp’s involvement from Cerevare. Will we be able to talk to the Corvids about establishing a communications link with the peaceful Chron?”

  “Well, one thing at a time. But if you happen to discuss that with your Corvid friend—Fha?—while you’re there, I’m sure no-one would mind.”

  She was obviously determined to make me sweat for this. “I’m on the way to Eri with a cargo hold full of ore. You’re lucky you caught me before I made the skip to Eridani.”

  “I’ll arrange a subcontract for the ore if you leave it on Jertenda instead, and head back to FarView. I’ll get my people here, ready for pickup, and we’ll escort you out to the new wormhole.” I met her eyes. “It’s not just a favour for me, or for the Protectorate. It’s for all of Nearspace.”

  She must have caught something in my voice, because she looked past the screen and said, “Hirin, you’ve heard the discussion. What do you think?”

  My brother-in-law’s smiling face appeared again over Luta’s shoulder. They still made a May-December couple, but the nanobioscavengers had closed the gap considerably. They couldn’t do for him what they’d done for Luta and me for seventy years, but he was evidently delighted with the changes.

  “I’ve made a few more upgrades to various ship systems since the last time we went through that wormhole,” Hirin said. “I think we’ll be better prepared for anything we find out there. And this mission sounds simple enough.” He winked at me before Luta could turn and look at him.

  “Oh, they always sound simple. You don’t think the crew will have something to say about this?” Luta asked. “I promised them some vacation time on Eri when we arrive with this load of ore.”

  Hirin shrugged. “This crew will go where you ask them to,” he said with assurance. “They might grumble, but they won’t mean it.”

  Luta turned back to face me through the screen. “Well, there you have it,” she said. “The old man thinks we’re going, so I guess we’re going.” Now, though, a smile hid behind her words, and I knew she wasn’t really annoyed anymore.

  “One more thing,” I said, before she could say goodbye.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t tell Mother, all right?”

  Luta laughed, her green eyes crinkling at the corners. She still looked no more than thirty, despite her eighty-five years, thanks again to our mother’s nanotechnology. “Afraid you’ll get in trouble for sending me outside of Nearspace?”

  I shook my head. “Just security. Mother has connections on the Council, and we want to keep things under the radar for now. The crew should keep it quiet, too. Okej?”

  “I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things,” she said in mock annoyance, “but okej. I’ll go to Jertenda and then come to FarView. We should be there in three days.”

  I nodded. “Gis la revido, Luta. Take care.”

  “Talk to you soon, little brother,” she echoed with a smile, and broke the connection.

  I sat back from the screen and hoped we were doing the right thing.

  Chapter 2 – Luta

  Blast From The Past

  “I GUESS I’D better let them know,” I said to Hirin, after ending the conversation with my brother the Admiralo. I knew that having Lanar in the Nearspace Protectorate was a net benefit to all of us, but some days it didn’t feel that way. I stood from behind my desk and stretched, feeling the muscles pull and release. I hadn’t really gotten back into my routine of tae-ga-chi since I’d been sick, and my body was beginning to feel it.

  Hirin slid an arm around my waist and pulled me into a warm hug. “You didn’t have to say yes, you know. You could have turned him down. Lanar wouldn’t have minded.”

  I gave him a mock glare. “I thought you wanted to go.” Then I quickly kissed him on the cheek and added, “I’m just teasing. But I think this time, he would have minded. Lanar’s worried.”

  “The notion of another Chron war has everybody on edge,” Hirin agreed.

  “Oh damne!”

  “What?”

  I pulled out of Hirin’s arms and put my fists on my hips. “Did you see his knuckles? They were all bruised and swollen. Like he punched someone—or something. I meant to ask him about it, but then he distracted me with this whole mission thing.”

  Hirin looked skeptical. “Lanar’s never been much of a brawler, has he?”

  “No, he’s more used to charming his way out of sticky situations. But I saw his hand—and the way he tried to hide it from me. That tells me he was fighting.”

  Hirin laughed. “Thanks for reminding me why I never try to lie to you. It’s a pointless exercise.”

  I pretended to swat him, took my datapad from the desk, and headed for the bridge of my ship. At least there, I might get some respect.

  Only Baden and Maja were on the bridge when I arrived. Seated next to each other at the communications console, his dark head and her blonde one leaned close together as they studied something on a datapad. Without looking up, Baden said, “Good morning, Captain.”

  “Good morning,” I said brightly. “How are you both? Sleep well?”

  Maja turned and looked at me, a suspicious tilt to her head. “Mother? What’s up?”

  I sat in the command chair and tried to look innocent. “Why does something have to be up for me to wish you a good morning?”

  “Haha, right,” Maja said, turning her skimchair completely around to face me. My daughter had undergone her own transformation recently, and she looked relaxed and comfortable, the hard lines that used to bracket her eyes and mouth softened away. This morning she’d pulled her blonde hair into a knot at the nape of her neck and wore a blue sweater that matched her eyes. Her change had nothing to do with nanotechnology, though. It was mostly her relationship with my comm officer. And partly, I hoped, her healed relationship with me. “If I’ve learned one new thing about you in the past few weeks, it’s that you are never this cheery first thing in the morning. Something’s definitely up.”

  So much
for respect.

  “Okej, you got me. But how about we get everyone up here so I don’t have to explain this multiple times?” I asked. “Baden, you can leave Viss out because he was on watch duty last night and he might be asleep, but get Rei and Yuskeya, would you?”

  “This sounds serious,” Maja observed with a smile. “I think I’d better make a galley run and grab us both a double caff.”

  Baden nodded agreement as he commed my pilot and navigator, and Maja hurried down the corridor away from the bridge. When they’d both answered, he swivelled his skimchair to face me.

  “Is it?” he asked. “Serious, I mean?”

  I sighed. “Not really. At least, not immediately. But it’s the Protectorate, and the situation is—worrisome.”

  “So there’s no rest for the weary?” His teasing tone couldn’t mask the undercurrent of concern.

  “How about a delayed rest?” I asked. “And why am I talking to you about this when I just said I’d explain to everyone at the same time?”

  Baden laughed and ran a hand through his cocoa-coloured hair. “Guess you caught me, Captain.” He turned back to the comm board and gave me a minute to gather my thoughts.

  It took less than five minutes for Maja to return and Rei and Yuskeya to gain the bridge as well. Viss was with them after all, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he’d probably been in Yuskeya’s quarters when Baden commed her. Despite some rocky weeks when they’d each found out the other had been keeping secrets, they’d repaired their relationship, which made me happy. I didn’t know what would happen for them when Yuskeya was inevitably recalled to a post on a Protectorate ship, but I hoped they’d find a way to work it out.

  Maja had gone one better than she’d said, and brought hot drinks for all.

  “Bless you,” Rei said with a grin as she accepted the double caff Maja handed her. “It won’t make up for the extra half hour of beauty sleep I’m losing thanks to your mother, but it will help.” With her long chestnut hair pulled up in a messy knot and her pridattii facial markings tracing the contours of her face like swirling runnels of spilled ink, Rei was unlikely to suffer any ill effects from a lack of “beauty” sleep. Rei was an exceptional pilot and my best friend of five years, and I already knew I’d trust her to pilot me anywhere.